Unrecognized emotions: how to survive for people who feel everything

It is common to think that excessive emotional reactions are something that needs to be dealt with, as they destroy relationships, provoke conflicts and become the cause of many other rash actions. However, the author of the book “I’ve Enough! How to live with emotional sensitivity” Imi Lo thinks completely differently and says that people who live in the world of feelings and perceive everything around them through them can actually see and feel what is invisible to others. To do this, you need to accept your high sensitivity and realize that it is not a weakness, but, on the contrary, a strength. We tell you who emotionally sensitive people are and what advantages they have.

Who are emotionally sensitive people?

An emotionally sensitive person in the most general sense is a person who has a greater range of emotions than anyone else and perceives the world and events occurring in it acutely, vividly and sensually. There are five signs of emotional sensitivity:

Depth, intensity and complexity of emotions.
Increased empathy and sensitivity
High level of sensitivity.
A rich inner world filled with feelings and a vivid imagination.
Creativity and existential anxiety.

Using these signs, you can determine whether you belong to the category of emotionally sensitive people.

Depth, intensity and complexity of emotions

If you are a person with high emotional sensitivity, you seem to exist in the world of emotions and cannot imagine yourself outside of it. You perceive any events acutely, and you feel truly alive only when you feel something. At the same time, emotions can be not only vivid, but also changeable: one minute you are at the peak of euphoria, and the next second you experience deep sadness.

You may be passionate about anything you do and can love deeply, grandly, and completely, so you strive to create strong connections with people, things, and places, which can make it difficult to say goodbye to them, even if necessary.

Increased empathy and sensitivity

Probably from a very early age you were interested in the lives of those around you, you even worried about people who had nothing to do with you. You may also feel a stronger connection to animals and nature, the other person's inner world and their physical sensations. Surely it will not be difficult for you to understand what your interlocutor is feeling and why he feels this way - and you feel it so clearly that sometimes other people's experiences are perceived as your own.

You tend to treat people empathically, and in close relationships you can romanticize and idealize your friend or partner, forgiving him of many shortcomings simply because you deeply feel his inner world. Moreover, some highly sensitive people have a low pain threshold, suffer from misophonia (intolerance to certain sounds), hyperacusis (sensitivity to certain frequencies and strengths of sound) and allergies.

High level of susceptibility

You do not tend to be content with superficial knowledge, because thanks to empathy and sensuality, you can penetrate to the very essence of things, see connections and important details that many miss. Sometimes you are able to predict the occurrence of a certain event in advance, understand a person’s state long before he explains it himself, and also recognize true intentions.

True, the ability to anticipate something does not always play into your hands, since some images and possible scenarios influence you so much that you cannot get rid of obsessive thoughts and emotions.

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Rich inner world and vivid imagination

A wide range of emotions gives rise to various images and associations that can develop into metaphors, ideas, fantasies and entire worlds. You are probably very inquisitive, prone to constant thinking and searching for answers to questions, which is why you are attentive to the information you study and the people with whom you communicate. You may suffer from perfectionism and are prone to excessive self-criticism.

When you read books, watch a movie or a theater production, then, most likely, the rest of the world ceases to exist for you - now there is only a fictional universe that you sensorily explore and react to vividly.

Creativity and existential crisis

Thanks to your insight skills, you may have often wondered about the meaninglessness of existence, experienced a fear of loneliness, and also been irritated by the fact that other people do not want to think about what is really important.

You often get hung up on the thought of the transience of time and the finitude of all things, because of this you try to make the most of every moment of life, to achieve creative and career heights. Perhaps you have several hobbies, and you are absolutely uncomfortable with the idea of a meaningless life without any goals, aspirations and global desires.

What are emotions

Emotion (from Latin emoveo - shocking, exciting) is a mental process that reflects a person’s attitude to various situations, the surrounding reality, and other people.

When a person experiences emotions, three conditional types of interconnected processes occur:

mental - internal feeling of emotions;
physiological - reactions to the experience of various body systems (nervous, respiratory, cardiovascular, etc.);
external - observable changes in facial expressions, gestures, voice, etc.

Emotions are a product of evolution. They developed fully only in humans. Which means there is a reason for this.

Emotions are a form of perception of reality. Neither reward nor punishment is a given.

A person himself perceives positively or negatively his ability to feel, depending on life experience, goals, and the degree of satisfaction of desires.

In the manifestation of emotions, you can see clues as to whether a person is doing the right thing or where he should move next, in what area of life he needs to make an effort, change something.

Range of expression of emotions:

by tone: positive or negative;
by intensity: strong or weak;
according to sthenicity (impact on activity): sthenic - encouraging action (for example, inspiration or rage), or asthenic - reducing the desire to act (for example, melancholy).

Thus, some emotions help a person get what he wants and improve the quality of his life in general, while others interfere.

Aspirations such as stopping feeling emotions, learning to control them, acting exclusively rationally, without the influence of feelings, arise if a person perceives emotions as a hindrance. The reasons for this can be different, and often they depend on the characteristics of the person’s psyche.

Who has high and low emotionality?

This issue is discussed clearly and clearly at Yuri Burlan’s training “System-vector psychology”. Vectors - sets of innate qualities, characteristics, desires and predispositions - characterize, among other things, how emotional a person is by nature.

Those with a visual vector have the greatest emotionality. In addition, it is the most noticeable: it manifests itself more clearly in behavior, in facial expressions, in changes in voice, etc. “Emotions are written on the face” - this is about such people.

When the owners of the visual vector experience positive emotions, one can only envy them. How they rejoice, how they admire, how they are touched! And how they know how to love - with all their hearts!

And how this heart hurts when it’s broken... Fears, anxieties, despondency, losses, mental pain, a feeling of loneliness, hot temper and irritability - the whole gamut of dark tones. Any person experiencing these feelings suffers greatly. But for an emotional person, such experiences come to the fore. The feeling that life consists only of them. It is impossible to think about anything else; the person himself and those around him suffer. How can you stop feeling if this is your essence?

For owners of the sound vector, the picture changes. Their emotional amplitude is much lower. Even the face is usually impassive, thoughtfully focused, without intense facial expressions. Outwardly, they often seem calm and reasonable, cold, even insensitive. Usually this is how they are characterized by people with a visual vector in comparison with themselves.

But it is not so. Inside them, a storm of experiences may be raging, haunting thoughts; a cosmic-scale black hole of the meaninglessness of life may be hiding. However, outwardly this is imperceptible - such people keep everything to themselves, and few people allow anyone to know about their emotional experiences.

Owners of the sound vector especially value a thoughtful approach, the work of thought, and the power of the intellect. Therefore, emotionality is considered unnecessary. She is perceived as a hindrance. Because of this, they may often wonder how to turn off emotions so as not to be distracted.

It also happens that the human psyche contains properties of both sound and visual vectors. In this case, options are possible. Often, auditory manifestations can suppress visual ones, that is, such a person generally shows emotions less and restrains them more easily. Or the states switch depending on the circumstances. A person can be reasonable, calm and thoughtful, and after a while get lost in worries.

Both these and other properties are given to a person by nature, and not just like that, but so that he learns to apply them correctly, realize himself and benefit others. When this doesn’t work out, emotional disruptions begin - from hysterics and mood swings to complete insensitivity and loss of the ability to empathize.

Why turn off emotions?

For what reasons do people want to understand how to get rid of emotions? Why do they become a hindrance, a burden, a source of suffering?

Difficult life situation. For example, it often happens in a painful breakup or non-reciprocal love. This is intense suffering that overshadows all other feelings. It is especially difficult if jealousy, resentment, and depression are mixed in. A person is already thinking about how to kill emotions in himself, and not just control them. Because at this moment he feels that it is better not to feel anything at all than what he feels now.
Loss. The death of loved ones, a break in a relationship or a forced separation (for example, children moving away from their parents) unsettles you, this is natural. But if even after a long time a person cannot free himself from melancholy, then emotions become what he wants to get rid of in order to make it easier to cope with the loss.
Unstable emotional state. Mood swings, short temper, anxiety, panic states, inability to control oneself in stressful situations, lack of self-confidence, etc. A person feels that he cannot cope with life circumstances and does not react quite adequately. It becomes difficult to act constructively, solve problems, and interact with people in conflict or tense situations.
Fear of the future. After a negative experience, a person may fear that the situation will repeat itself and that he will feel as bad as he once did. To somehow protect himself, he may want to figure out how to stop feeling emotions altogether forever.
Pragmatism. Emotionality can be seen as weakness. Especially if a person values a purely rational approach. For example, when doing business, business negotiations, making difficult decisions, etc. Ambitious, profit-oriented people - owners of the skin vector - consider the ability to control themselves, restrain emotions, and be impenetrable as a competitive advantage. Cold calculation and nothing personal - in some cases this approach is useful.
Difficult relationships with others. If a person feels that he is reacting too painfully to the words or actions of other people, then he may also think about getting rid of emotions. For example, he tends to often feel offended or feel strong guilt, get irritated over small things, or suffer from a lack of attention and emotional response from others.

One way or another, the question of how to stop feeling emotions arises in connection with other people. Other people and relationships with them are the main source of any experience, positive or negative. Something doesn’t go well when interacting with others - and feelings become unpleasant, painful, and disturbing. And a lack of understanding of one’s own nature and unconscious processes and needs enhances the negative effect.

The desire to turn off emotions arises as a reaction to what is happening, which a person cannot adapt in the necessary way.

The person shifts focus: he sees the problem in his ability to experience emotions, and not in his inability to cope with a difficult situation. Precisely because at this stage all the negative experiences that have piled up are too much for him. He is looking for something that will help him, looking for a solution. But “not react” does not mean “decide”.

Problems of highly sensitive people

A person who vividly perceives the world through feelings is often considered an emotionally immature person, since his reactions to various events seem excessive and inadequate to the situation. This really happens - for example, when it is necessary to resolve a conflict, but instead a person who is overwhelmed by emotions swears even more and does not want to find a way out of the situation.

But why is this happening? By and large, only because until the end of the 20th century, the only indicator of intelligence and talent was IQ. However, this coefficient took into account exclusively the abilities of the mind, but did not at all reflect a person’s ability to perceive the world differently - through empathy, the ability to stand in the place of another, feel the mood of the interlocutor, see his intentions and potential hidden from the eyes of others. Therefore, it is intelligence, analytical and linguistic abilities that have become important in society, and not emotions and creativity.

It was only in the 80s of the last century that scientists began to develop new models of giftedness - this is, in fact, how emotional intelligence appeared. Canadian psychologist Francois Gagné was the first to separate the concepts of giftedness and talent in his book “The Differential Model of Giftedness and Talent.” In his opinion, talent is something that develops over time through training and education, and giftedness is innate abilities, a predisposition to a certain activity. He divided abilities into five categories: intellectual, creative, socio-emotional, sensorimotor and others (this includes extrasensory abilities, but there can be many questions about them). Only with this division came the understanding that talent is not only intellectual, and a person who does not have sufficient analytical abilities should not be considered stupid or untalented.

Around the same time as Gagne, the American psychologist Howard Gardner developed the concept of multiple intelligences, which included, for example, social intelligence - the way we build relationships with others - and also intrapersonal intelligence - how we perceive ourselves and how prone we are to self-reflection .

Despite all the achievements in the field of psychology and the active popularization of emotional intelligence, not every person realizes how important emotions are. It is customary to develop intelligence in children, but no one tells them how to perceive the world through the “wisdom of the heart.” This is why particularly sensitive, gifted children do not receive proper support, stop expressing their emotions and, as a result, face a huge number of problems in adulthood, which result in conflicts, impulsive decisions and the inability to understand themselves and others.

How to deal with it

Exercise “Time of Truth”

If you find that you experience a lot of emotions and cannot manage them, you are likely to be held captive by prejudices, old traumas and beliefs that are preventing you from realizing your full potential. The exercise is to look at unpleasant past events—for example, family experiences or awkward moments in society, among friends, or at work—in which you came to the conclusion that your emotions were wrong, and to understand why you believe that your emotions were wrong. that sensitivity only bothers you. Here's what you need to do:

Take a journal and remember as many painful events from the past as possible. Do you have a tendency to minimize negative feelings? Or, for example, try to separate yourself from your experiences, as if you don’t want them to be yours?
Be honest with yourself and remember your childhood. How did your parents react to your sensitivity? Did they support her or, on the contrary, try to suppress her? Did you receive support when you were sad, and if so, from whom? Were you able to experience your emotions with loved ones or did you have to do it alone?
As you remember, notice how your body reacts. Does your heart rate increase when you think about certain situations? Maybe your jaw or shoulders are tense? Emotions tend to manifest themselves externally, so pay attention to your body's signals.

During this exercise, if you dig deep, it may become clear why exactly you cannot accept and acknowledge your high sensitivity and, as a result, make it work for you.

Feel the events of the past

Some traumas from childhood or simply in the past can still cause negative feelings in us, such as sadness, anger, sadness or disappointment. It's normal to experience them, but if the events still seem painful, then you haven't let them go yet. Therefore, allow yourself to experience all the emotions again, even though it may be unpleasant.

Think of all the situations that make you sad, toxic envy, anger or any other negative emotion. Try to feel it all again, allow yourself to react exactly as you would have reacted if you had not forbidden yourself to freely express your feelings, even the most unpleasant and negative ones. As in the previous exercise, pay attention to the body’s reaction: do you have a lump in your throat, are your cheekbones tense, do you want to cry? And if yes, then allow yourself to feel it all. Reliving emotions is a way of healing and cleansing from what has been bothering you for a long time. When you fully experience everything, it will be easier for you to let go of events and move on.

Exercise “Mental rehearsal”

When we are nervous, anticipating a not-so-pleasant or simply exciting event, we begin to activate our defense mechanisms in advance so that the situation does not turn into a disaster for us. However, by overthinking ourselves, we only make things worse, while the event may well turn out to be not as terrible as it initially seemed. To avoid incorrect reactions, do several things:

Imagine an event that triggers your anxiety. Consider it in detail, but not from the point of view of a passive observer, but as an active participant.
Imagine all the possible scenarios in which this event could develop. Will people say things that make you sad? Or maybe it will make you angry? Imagine everything that could provoke a strong emotional reaction in you - from the smallest troubles to the largest.
Develop a plan for each option. What will you say if your relative gives unsolicited advice? What “mantra” will help you maintain composure and not lash out at your loved ones?
Choose the most successful strategies from all of them and imagine how you would apply them in a specific situation.
Imagine absolutely all scenarios and solutions. Then you will be more prepared, and it will no longer be your emotions that control you, but you will use them for their intended purpose.

Emotionality as a personality quality

It is easy to notice that people differ from each other both in the nature of the manifestation of emotions and in their quantity. There are those who are ready to squeal with delight or fall into hysterics for any reason. And others, in almost any situation, remain calm and even indifferent; perhaps they experience some experiences, but it can be difficult to notice them.

Manifestations of emotionality

Features of the emotional sphere of personality are manifested in a number of individual characteristics that leave an imprint on behavior as a whole.

Level of excitability. This indicator is only partially related to the sphere of emotions and is more neurophysiological than mental in nature. But the nature of a person’s emotionality largely depends on it. More excitable people are, accordingly, more emotional. The level of excitability is associated with the speed and strength of nervous processes, primarily with the emergence of foci of excitation in the cerebral cortex.
Emotional stability is determined by the duration of arousal, and therefore by the duration of experiencing certain emotions. Fleeting, superficial emotions, bright but unstable outbursts of feelings, frequent mood swings are signs of a fickle nature. But on the other hand, excessive fixation on certain experiences, “chewing” some emotional situation over and over again can lead to serious problems, including psychological ones.
Strength and depth of experience. Strong emotions are characteristic of many bright, extraordinary personalities. Such emotional states play an important role in creativity; they support the energy, activity and performance of the individual on the path to success. On the other hand, such emotions themselves are energy-intensive; their experience often leads to emotional burnout - a feeling of devastation, apathy and mental fatigue.
Expressiveness is the ability (and need) of a person to broadcast his emotions to others. Expressiveness is often mistaken for increased emotionality, but most often feelings are expressed more strongly than they are experienced, as people simply want to attract attention to themselves. Many people generally “play to the public” without experiencing even half of the emotions that a reserved, withdrawn, non-expressive person experiences.

The combination of these characteristics and their different levels makes each person a unique and unrepeatable personality from an emotional point of view. The nature and level of our emotions is associated with a number of reasons, among which two groups can be distinguished: individual characteristics of the nervous system and external factors.

Emotionality and temperament

One of the main reasons for differences in the emotional sphere of people is the characteristics of nervous processes, that is, temperament.

Without delving into the analysis of this concept, I will only say that the type of temperament is understood as the innate characteristics of the mental processes of excitation and inhibition in the cerebral cortex. The combination of characteristics such as strength, speed and the ratio of excitation and inhibition gives a huge variety of individual psychological types of people. They are conventionally divided into 4 main ones: choleric, phlegmatic, melancholic, sanguine. They do not occur in their pure form, but in most people the traits of one type predominate, and the rest are present in smaller quantities.

Each type is characterized by its own picture of emotionality, determined by the uniqueness of mental processes:

Choleric. Due to the high speed and instability of mental processes, emotions in this type manifest themselves brightly, violently, but not for long. Cholerics are characterized by rapid changes in mood, but positive emotions predominate. After a little hysteria, the choleric quickly switches his attention to something pleasant. These people are amorous, but fickle, ready to support any project with enthusiasm and delight, but their enthusiasm does not last long.
Phlegmatic person. The emotional opposite of choleric. This type of temperament is characterized by a high level of inhibition, so emotions in phlegmatic people arise with difficulty and do not manifest themselves clearly. The calmness of these people borders on coldness and callousness. However, the vaguely expressed feelings of phlegmatic people are very stable and often last a lifetime.
Melancholic. This type is called weak due to the low level of activity of nervous processes. The change in mood of a melancholic person is almost imperceptible, but since negative emotions are objectively more stable than positive ones, people of this type are constantly in a state of despondency. They are easily upset and cannot create a positive mood on their own. On the other hand, this is a very sensitive type. Melancholic people are sensitive to changes in the mood of others, they have a high ability to empathize.
Sanguine. This is a strong and stable type, he is capable of vivid emotions, which also last a long time. A sanguine person is better able to regulate his emotionality than any other type of temperament. But the persistence and even stubbornness of sanguine people, as well as their desire for dominance, sometimes makes these people aggressive and cruel.

Since we have traits of all four types to one degree or another, we can behave differently in different life situations. And emotionality itself, as a personal quality, is also formed and changed under the influence of external factors.